User blog:SirLinkalot96/The Future of Greg Ryder: Part 5
JUNE 30th, 2020, QUEEN INDUSTRIES' PARKING GARAGE, 1:48 AM. . . Lisa and I were walking through the parking garage, and I saw Michael's red Infernus sports car. Man, I can't believe Michael is just trusting someone like me with this sweet ride, considering the fact that I haven't driven a car since I got back from the war AND you weren't really required to follow any road rules in combat either, so I'm probably gonna be a little rusty. I opened the passenger door for Lisa and she got in the car, "What a gentlemen! Thank you." I shut the passenger door, and as I was walking around to the driver's side, I was thinking, "Come on, Greg. You got this. It'll be just like the old days." I opened the door and sat in the car. I started the car and revved the engine. This seemed to excite her, so I revved the engine again. I backed out of the parking spot and drove out of the parking garage and onto the freeway. "Let's go hit up a bar!" Lisa suggested excitedly. I replied, "Hell yeah!" and accelerated the car as I got onto the Broker Bridge. "So, Lisa. Tell me about yourself." I started the conversation. Lisa said, "I work for Michael, what did you do before you started working at Queen Industries?" "Well, uh," I began, thinking about how I was going to tell her about my past. I decided to skip to the war part., "I fought over in North Korea. As a Marine. Infantry." At least it makes me seem heroic or something. "Really? I was a medic at a base camp out there." She recalled. Then it hit me. She was the one who fixed me up after I got shot! Before I got shipped back to the States! I remember now. "You were the one who got the bullets out of me after Platoon 209 returned from their assignment." I said quietly with a slight grin, "Corporal Ryder, at your service." "Oh my God. It IS you! I knew you looked familiar! You collapsed at the front gates of the base when you and those two soldiers returned. What happened? Our superiors didn't tell us anything. Just that it was a success but we lost almost the whole squad." I sighed sadly and confessed, "Our mission was to infiltrate a small North Korean base camp about 30 miles north of our base camp. . ." JUNE 14th, 2020, THE NORTH KOREAN COUNTRYSIDE, 142 HOURS. . . "Listen up, ladies! Here's the plan. Lopez, Smith, Ryder, Chang, and Merrill are going to scale the wall on the other side of the complex, and provide some cover fire for us. This should distract the enemy, providing the rest of us time to scale the wall on this side, and get in here. So, hold your position, and wait for them to make the move." Sergeant Greene instructed us, "Now, move out, soldiers!" We obliged, and I moved out with my assigned group to carry out our task. "What are we even doing in here, anyway? Are we gathering intel or something?" Smith asked us as we approached the wall. He was probably sleeping during the debriefing, as usual. I whispered angrily, "I don't know, Smith! Now shut the fuck up before you get us all killed!" "Ladies first, Ryder." Merrill joked as he held out his hands to give me a boost up to the ledge. I gave him the finger and climbed up to the ledge. I poked my head up and saw a guard leaning against the ledge, smoking a cigarette. I'm surprised he didn't notice me. I took out my bowie knife and clasped my hand around his mouth and stuck my knife in his back as I pulled him over the ledge. I pulled up Merrill and the rest of the my group and once we were up there, we open fired on the North Korean soldiers hanging out in the center of the complex by their trucks. They returned fire but they were caught completely off guard, so we took out a good number of them. After about 2 minutes, I heard Green over the radio say, "Okay, we're all over the wall. Now let's take out the stragglers." I responded, "Roger that." and we shot the remaining soldiers. After they were all dead, we made our way into the complex and regrouped by the trucks. "Okay, we'll split up into groups and try to find what we're looking for. Stay on your guard, and tell me if you find something." Chang asked with a puzzled expression on his face, "What are we looking for, exactly?" Greene said quietly with a grim look on his face, "When you find it, you'll know. Trust me." We split up and my group (Merrill, Chang, and Smith) took the lower floors while Greene and everybody else took the higher floors. I cautiously opened the door, which I think was leading into the basement. All the lights were off, and we turned on the flashlights on our rifles. It looked like we were in a computer room of some sorts, and there was a huge computer monitor in the center of the room. I turned it on and something horrifying came up onto the screen. It was a map of the world, and there were all these little red dots marked around the world (specifically America) with little Korean markings underneath them. There was also a timer at the bottom of the screen that was at the 16 hour mark, and was counting down. "Hey, Merrill. You're more fluent in Korean than the rest of us. What does this say?" I asked Merrill. Merrill squinted and then he gasped and dropped his gun (I'm surprised it didn't go off!) "It. . . It. . ." Merrill stuttered. I demanded frantically, "Come on, man! Spit it out!" Merrill said quietly, "It shows detonation points for nukes all major cities around the world. Specifically the U.S. and it's allies. The timer down here is when the nukes will be set off." I stared at the computer in pure horror, "This is much bigger than us. We have to stop them! If they succeed, many innocent people will die, and it can ensure the North Koreans victory in the war!" Something caught my eye. It was a flash drive sitting on the desk. I put it into the computer, and it showed a bunch of numbers. "These are the launch codes! This is it! This is what we're looking-" Chang was cut off by a fatal gunshot to his throat. Before we could react, someone threw a smoke grenade. All of a sudden, I was hit really hard in the back of the head, and everything went black. . . AN UNSPECIFIED AMOUNT OF TIME LATER. . . ''' I opened my eyes and I immediately noticed I was tied to a chair. My arms were tied behind my back, and my feet were tied together. My helmet, shirt, boots, and socks were missing. It looked like I was in some sort of torture room. There was blood everywhere, a tray of bloody surgical tools on a table beside me, and shackles on the walls. A television was in front of me, and it was turned off. My heart started racing and my mind went wild. Whatever was gonna happen, wasn't gonna be good. I looked in the corner of the room and saw Merrill sitting up against a pipe, and he had a bike lock on his neck, securing his neck onto the pipe. There was a bucket sitting next to him, and with some toilet paper sitting next to him. He was bloody and beaten, and I think he must be unconscious. All of a sudden, the door opened, and a guy in a North Korean soldier outfit walked in with a briefcase. He had a medic patch on his arm sleeve and he had some serious burns on his face. He shut the door behind him and casually walked up to the table. He placed his briefcase on the table, grabbed a chair and casually sat down in front of me, as if we were having fucking brunch together. There's something really odd about this guy. "My name is Dr. Jeong. What's your name?" The man spoke fluent English. He had a grin on his face, like we're good friends or something. I don't like it. I remained silent, and looked away from him. "Giving me the old silent treatment, huh? Okay, I can work with that." He stood up and opened his briefcase. My mind was racing, "What's he gonna pull out? A machete? A hacksaw? A drillbit?!" But it wasn't any of those things. It was a video tape. He put it in the VCR and turned on the TV. What was on the screen, made me tremble with fear. It was a video of Lopez getting brutally tortured. He was missing both his ears, he had serious burns on his face, some teeth were gone, and he was covered in blood. All of a sudden, Dr. Jeong came onto the TV screen, and he was holding a drill. "Not gonna talk, huh? Let me put a little ''thought ''into that head of yours!" He turned on the drill and slowly started advancing to Lopez's head. Before the drill made contact with his head, Dr. Jeong turned off the TV. I just remember thinking, "Oh my God, what sort of nightmare am I in?! Wake up. . . Wake up, Greg. . . . . WAKE UP, GOD DAMMIT!!!" "He gave me the silent treatment too. It didn't work out too well for him. If he wanted to be silent, then I physically enabled him to remain silent. You can't speak without a tongue, can you?" Dr. Jeong giggled. "Fuck you, you sick bastard!" I screamed and spit at Dr. Jeong. He wiped my spit off his face with a hankerchief and pulled out a scalpel. "Now, let's get started.' Dr. Jeong smiled as the scalpel slowly approached my face. . . '''BACK TO PRESENT DAY. . . I stopped in the middle of my story, and I looked up from my drink, which I've been staring into for the past thirty minutes. I looked up at Lisa and her eyes were wide as she was listening intently to my tale. She asked, "What happened with Dr. Jeong?" I answered, "Well, let's just say, he didn't die well. Not well at all. I'll leave it at that." I remembered the ghastly look on his face when I broke free from the ropes keeping me to the chair. And how the light in his eyes was extinguished like a candle after I gave the doctor a taste of his own medicine. . . . His doctor recommendation? A hacksaw, a nailgun, and a blowtorch is what I prescribed to him. I was glad when he died the same way that he killed my friends, and possibly countless other people: He died like an animal. Like a rat. I regret nothing. UNFINISHED Category:Blog posts